​Dane Watkins

While in residence Dane Watkins worked on a new project called, 'Iconikit', an identikit approach for users to create an iconic profile of how they'd like to be seen on the web.

Dane experimented with registration processes by building an online profile builder (Iconikit) that challenges the reductive nature of data capture in form filling. This isn't a corporate solution to marketing but an artwork critically engaged with the survey and how technology shapes our lives.

The profile builder creates a composite image like an identikit, but instead of photographs Iconikit uses a database of curious drawings that expand upon the usually limited options within questionnaires.

Forms by their very nature are limited and try to reduce complexity into byte sized chunks that are manageable. This can be challenged as in the 2001 England and Wales census when 390,127 people declared their religion to be Jedi. Dane builds upon this example to find even more ways for people to create a definition of themselves.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

NowDane is currently working on a practice based PhD that explores the survey as artistic practice and how communication technologies and database management systems can be used as a material by artists as well as project evaluators within the field of cultural production at Falmouth University.

​IntroductionDane's work is a research-based studio practice that examines how conventional drawing and animation practices can be developed and shown in digital environments such as the web or a computer driven installation. In the past few years Dane has developed a body of drawings and animations shaped by his response to a culture in which there is both an excess of imagery and a homogenisation of visual language.​BackgroundDane trained in animation at Liverpool Polytechnic (graduating in 1993), concentrating on hand drawn animation for film. Since then he has developed work through using vector-based digital tools, undertaking commissions and residencies, and by distributing work online. Expanding programming skills has allowed Dane to develop his practice by allowing him to work experimentally with timelines in his drawing and animation.